


Daughter

by RedFive



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Epistolary, Grief/Mourning, Hannibal deals with regret, M/M, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, loss of a child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-23 19:23:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13196889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedFive/pseuds/RedFive
Summary: A year after the fall, Hannibal looks inward and attempts to lay Abigail's ghost to rest. Written for the Radiance Anthology.





	Daughter

**Author's Note:**

> For A. (June 17th, 1993 -- June 20th, 2006) You changed us, kiddo.

Daughter,

I write to you on the occasion of what ought to have been your graduation day. If not for your father and I, you'd be among friends today or no worse off than you are now. I try to imagine what you would be like. What major would you have chosen? What acts of rebellion would you have committed? But my thoughts spin round-and-round, going nowhere. I wonder about this creative block; whether it is the result of a latent sense of guilt or supernatural in nature, but I have resolved to lay you to rest after this writing and hope that you receive my final confession in the spirit that it is given.

Yesterday, I went fishing with Will (his idea, not mine.) If it is of any comfort to you, I was indeed as miserable as you might imagine in those ghastly rubber boots. Will barely spoke a word unless it was of you. He told me how he taught you how to build a boat for your trip across the Atlantic and of your many adventures since then within the confines of his memory palace, and I was happy to hear of them.

Listening to him, I realized that I owe you a debt, one I can never repay, and for this I apologize. Your life, your death, and your presence in the hereafter: they continue to shape him as an artist shapes a stone in ways I never could have predicted. You were the blood and breath that fueled his change, my little lamb. My own contributions are small in comparison with what you have accomplished both in life and in death. You and Garret Jacob Hobbs brought Will to me in the first place. You brought him back to me again in Europe when I rightly did not deserve a second chance, and I believe that you were our guardian angel when we fell into the ocean, because divine intervention is the only plausible explanation for our survival.

If your presence is indeed still among us, then I am glad it is Will whom you have chosen. Watch over him, Abigail, if you can find the compassion to do so. His grief persists and many of his scars refuse to heal. Watch over him as we failed to watch over you.

With love,

 

Hannibal Lecter

 

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to @llewcie for beta reading this, to the editors of the Radiance Anthology for choosing this work for publication, and to you for taking the time to read it.
> 
> One of my favorite things about fanfiction and fandom is the opportunity it presents to sort through and process things in a fictional and controlled environment. I'm grateful for the opportunity to have done that here, 
> 
> A bit of background: I began writing this letter as a grief exercise on the tenth anniversary of the passing of my little cousin. I only got as far as the line “I have resolved to lay you to rest after this writing and hope that you receive my final confession in the spirit that it is given," before I stalled out and closed out the document. It would be a year before I was ready to go back to Daughter, but in that year, I had learned a lot about life and letting go. 
> 
> The loss of a young person is startling because it is a subversion of the natural order of things. It’s also an experience that a not a lot of people can relate too and a lonely and isolating experience for the bereaved at a time when they are most in need of support. To those of you who have lost a loved one too soon, you have all my love and sympathies. And digital hugs a plenty!
> 
> All my best,
> 
> \- Red


End file.
